


Above All, Do No Harm

by Aesoleucian



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, i guess?, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing worse than being tortured by Pharma is when people insist on <i>caring</i> about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A principle of bioethics and the medical field.
> 
> I also wanted to name it for:  
>  _Je suis ton plat favori/Le sang sur ton bistouri_  
>  but of course naming English-language fanfic in French is extremely pretentious. Lyrics are by Malajube.

Ratchet opens his eyes and is immediately alarmed by the fact that he has no idea where he is. Most of what he can see is the ceiling, which isn’t the clean white he’s expecting but a dirty gray. He tries to turn to look at the walls—

The second, much more alarming, thing is that he’s being restrained. His wrists, ankles, and waist are tightly pinned to some kind of angled slab, leaving only his head and shoulders able to move.

“Ratchet! You’re finally awake!” Pharma’s voice, coming from his right. Scrap. “I guess my dosage was a little off. Mea culpa. I was expecting you to come online almost a cycle ago.”

Ratchet cranes his neck toward the sound, but can’t see past his own shoulder. The problem is, unfortunately, rectified when Pharma’s face appears suddenly above his. He’s wearing a manic smile, although Ratchet could have predicted that. “All right, Pharma,” Ratchet says, modulating his voice into a good approximation of reasonableness, “What in Primus’ name is going on?”

Pharma leans against the slab, resting an elbow on one of Ratchet’s legs. “You should be grateful, really. You were going to cry your eyes out!” When this produces no change in Ratchet’s scowl, he continues. “I waited until you passed out from the rust, carried you here, and gave us both the antidote. I thought, well, I _could_ run away, but that wouldn’t be very satisfying.”

“What happened to…?” Ratchet’s voice refuses to finish the sentence.

“Your friends? Probably dead. I didn’t check.”

Of course, First Aid and Ambulon are fine, since they won’t transform. But Drift and Pipes… Ratchet closes his eyes.

“Don’t take it so hard, Ratchet. _We’re_ in no danger. The DJD won’t find us, and neither will anyone who wants to rescue you. I took the liberty of disabling your homing beacon.”

Ratchet has to restrain a snarl. Here he is, in a dingy makeshift medbay, with a maniac who probably plans to do a lot of unnecessary surgery on him just to prove he can. And he’s really going to have to work for his eventual escape.

“Why. Am I here.” It takes some effort to look into Pharma’s eyes, but he’s damned if he’ll show any weakness to this son of a glitch.

“As my guest. A test subject. A has-been.”

“Fine.” He’s proud of the way his voice oozes apathy. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

Pharma smiles dreamily. “I never thought you’d be so cooperative! Let’s start with these hands, then, shall we? We both know they’re no good. Can you even feel them any more?” He snaps off Ratchet’s right thumb before there’s time to redirect the nervecircuits. Ratchet screams when the pain hits him, as much because it’s unexpected as because it hurts.

“Oh, good. That’s still working. Try and wiggle your fingers for me.”

Ratchet attempts to clench his hands into fists, but they’re stuck in the limp positions they must have taken when he fell into unconsciousness.

“Pity. We should probably just remove them altogether.” He breaks off Ratchet’s fingers, one by one, dropping them onto Ratchet’s chest as if for safekeeping. Ratchet maintains his scowl—he can go on scowling for as long as necessary—and is silent. It doesn’t hurt now, except in the way it hurts to know he won’t ever be able to repair them.

The bases of his hands, though, are deep-wired, and even though Pharma cuts them cleanly off with a laser scalpel Ratchet has to suppress a moan. He clamps his eyes shut and presses his head against the back of the slab until the pain subsides to the level of merely excruciating. He’s still had worse.

He regrets keeping his eyes closed a klik later when he feels Pharma’s fingers inside his wrist armor, running along the severed wires. It’s worse than painful—it’s _wrong_ , like Pharma invited himself inside Ratchet without asking. Ratchet tries to will lasers from his eyes, but Pharma just chuckles.

“Just relax, Ratchet. If you glare any harder you’ll blow a gasket. Your body is mine, so you might as well get used to it.”

Ratchet pours out every profanity he’s ever heard at Pharma, knowing all he’ll get is a condescending laugh. It feels good anyway, even when Pharma chucks him under the chin and suggests a gag. He turns away, muttering to himself, and Ratchet closes his eyes again to try and think.

Pharma won’t do any permanent damage to him, he’s too desperate for Ratchet’s approval. But the longer he’s away from the Lost Light, the more of the crew will die. Will First Aid and Ambulon get aboard? The ship has the facilities to decontaminate them. Maybe Swerve will pick something up on Fisitron’s secret frequency, unless he’s too busy getting everyone drunk.

Did Pharma take out all of Ratchet’s signaling capability, or just the homing beacon?

Pharma returns with a little toolchest, which he opens and sets on Ratchet’s legs. “Let’s see. What modifications have I always wanted to make?” His beautiful hands are inside Ratchet’s arm again, stroking the cables in a sickening parody of intimacy.

“Pharma, do you really need to do this?” Pharma looks up from Ratchet’s wrist. “We both already know you have the skill and the means, even in a scraphole like this.” A little flattery can’t hurt. If there’s one thing he knows about Pharma’s psyche, it’s his need to be admired. Especially by Ratchet. 

“Dear Ratchet.” Pharma frees one hand to caress Ratchet’s face, and he has to suppress another shudder. “I’m not doing this because I need to prove anything.” That’s absolute dross, of course. “I’m doing this as punishment. You thought you could outwit me—of course now you understand that you can’t—but you won’t be allowed to make that mistake again.” His hand wanders downward, resting on Ratchet’s chestplate for a moment before popping it neatly off. He never wastes a movement, except insofar as almost everything he does is unnecessarily evil. “I’m going to make some changes. Nothing major.” Now he’s running his fingers over the outer wiring, and Ratchet is conscious of how helpless he really is. Pharma could rip out his spark right now.

Almost as if he heard the thought, Pharma pulls aside some buffer material and reaches his spark casing. Ratchet can feel his spark pulsing wildly, and see its light on Pharma’s face. “It would be so easy,” he murmurs. Almost involuntarily Ratchet starts pushing against his restraints, giving in to panic. Later he can tell himself he was playing up to Pharma’s expectations, but now—

Pharma’s eyes lock onto his face. “You hate that. You hate knowing that I could extinguish you at any moment, and… ah, you hate that I’m inside you.” He leans over to lower his face inside Ratchet’s chest and _licks_ Ratchet’s spark casing.

Ratchet lets out a soft “No—!” and before he can stop himself he’s trembling with this feeling of violation. His whole body is tensed as if he could possibly flee, and his cooling systems start to whir loudly. 

Pharma raises his head to make eye contact and smiles. “You like that?”

“No, you sick son of a glitch,” Ratchet spits. “Just do some damned surgery already, it’s what you know best.”

“If the great Ratchet commands it, I must obey.” Pharma drags one last finger down the side of Ratchet’s spark casing, and stands up.

“Let me see.” Pharma is searching through his inventory of tools, back toward Ratchet. “You know, I don’t really like the thought of you being able to survive without me.” He turns around to deposit a handful of clamps on the slab by Ratchet’s shoulder. That will mean work on his fuel lines.

“Such a romantic,” says Ratchet bitterly. This is not going to be good for his chances of escape, which is exactly how Pharma intends it. 

He can’t quite see into his own torso, restrained as he is, so he closes his eyes and tries to pretend he’s offline. It doesn’t prevent him from feeling the hand that closes around his energon storage tank in time with Pharma’s chuckle, or the pinch of the clamps. It doesn’t prevent him from jerking slightly every time Pharma does something totally unnecessary, like carefully pull out a nonvital wire and finger the tip before taping over the wound.

It’s the most drawn-out energon-storage bypass operation Ratchet has ever witnessed. If he weren’t in incredible pain throughout the whole thing, he would have started rolling his eyes after the first cycle or so. As it is, it’s two and a half cycles before Pharma straightens up, smiles in satisfaction, and leaves Ratchet unable to store enough energon to make it through a tenth of a megacycle without refueling. Ratchet is dizzy, slipping in an out of consciousness, because Pharma drained all his stored energon for the procedure.

The last thing he hears is Pharma’s voice: “I’ll be keeping you sedated while I’m not working on you, so you can’t use that clever brain module to think up any ways to escape. You can save yourself the trouble of trying, of course. There aren’t any.”

—

This time Ratchet wakes a little before Pharma was expecting him to, as evidenced by the fact that there’s no mad medic standing over him with a cheerful threat ready. He stays very quiet and keeps his eyes closed, and starts thinking desperately about what he’s going to do.

The first step is to get out of his restraints. Next he needs to disable Pharma, and call for help. Easy. The _problem_ is that his only way of getting rid of his bonds is to convince Pharma to take them off. Pharma’s known weaknesses: vanity, dramatics, being absolutely Primus-damned crazy, and sadism. Though the last one might not really count. Known strengths: craftiness, medical skill… That’s pretty much it. Well, and the fact that he has two hands and can move freely. Ratchet has faced worse odds before.

He has to get out before Pharma succeeds in making him totally dependent. He already can’t survive long without an intratubular energon drip. Sooner or later Pharma is going to reduce his mobility even more. A sharp spike of fear jumps in his mind, his cooling fans tick softly on, and something starts beeping.

Footsteps to his right. “Good morning, Ratchet.”

Ratchet doesn’t open his eyes or give any indication that he’s awake. If Pharma will only let him have a few kliks to think…

“There’s no point pretending to be offline, Ratchet. I already know.” He feels fingers pushing themselves through the gap between his abdominal and pelvic armor, finding exposed wire, and twitches in revulsion. Not fear, he tells himself.

“Fine, I’m awake. Get your fragging hand out of my plating.” He opens his eyes to glare, wishing he didn’t have to start the day looking at that face.

“Is that the sweet sound of distress I hear in your voice? Panic?”

“Absolutely. Whatever gets you excited. Why don’t you tell me what you really plan to do with me? Since I’m so completely at your mercy.”

“I know you’re trying to be sarcastic,” says Pharma, curling his hand around something Ratchet would rather he didn’t touch (Ratchet jumps slightly), “but you really are at my mercy, and it’s nice to hear you say it.”

“What’s your endgame?” Ratchet growls, twitching under the metal straps holding him down. He can only mask anxiety and disgust with anger. “You going to kill me? I don’t think that would satisfy you.”

“You’re right, of course.” Pharma pauses, an apparently fond smile on his face. “I think I’ll keep you helpless forever. You can watch me botch surgeries I’m perfectly capable of doing and kill whoever ends up on my operating table. It does tickle my fancy to have you free but totally unable to do anything. Shall I remove your legs?”

He must see Ratchet’s eyes widen, because he laughs. “You’re right. That would hardly be a challenge at all. I’ll rewire them so that when you try to walk they’ll move randomly for thirty nanokliks. If you’re good, I’ll even let you get up and try them out.”

That settles it. Ratchet will be a good patient, and when Pharma unbinds him he’ll… do _something_. He can’t accept that he’s totally powerless. So he suffers through the rewiring. Periodically Pharma will pause to stroke whatever wire he’s working on, which is disgusting but exactly what Ratchet would expect. So he settles in for a good long glare. An extremely long glare.

At last Ratchet’s restraints retract, and he slides down the angled slab to land on the floor. His joints aren’t in great condition, he notes, probably because they haven’t been used since the rust damage was repaired. Cautiously he straightens his legs—

They begin to spasm wildly and he’s jerked to his knees. After another kick he falls facedown onto the filthy floor. Above him Pharma is laughing. He waits until his legs stop moving, and then pushes himself up to hands and knees.

Pharma’s hands close on part of his sideplating and lift him back to standing. “The operation was a success! Of course, we knew it would be.” He walks around to stand in front of Ratchet, who can see he’s holding a needle. He’s going to put Ratchet back under.

Ratchet lunges at him, shoving the stumps of his wrists into Pharma’s neck. Pharma may be taller, but Ratchet is a little heavier, and he ends up sitting on Pharma’s chest, pressing down with all his strength on the wire that connects Pharma’s brain module to his spark. It’s heavily armored, but if Ratchet can get the edge of his wrist into one of the chinks that allow it to bend, he can kill Pharma.

Sadly, Pharma still has working hands. He starts pushing Ratchet’s arms away, relieving the pressure on his neck. If that’s how it’s going to be—Ratchet lets him, and then brings his forearm back around like a club to the side of Pharma’s face.

He seems to be temporarily stunned, so Ratchet bashes his stump directly into Pharma’s nose a few times. Pharma goes limp. Hopefully he’s not just acting. The syringe in his hand is half empty, Ratchet sees—then he only has nanokliks until he starts to get dizzy. He’ll have to do something to make sure Pharma’s out of commission longer. Crudely he picks up the syringe between his wrists, stabs Pharma in the neck, and pushes the plunger down much too quickly. It doesn’t matter. He drags Pharma to the foot of the slab, places wrists in ankle cuffs, somehow gets himself to the locking mechanism… and passes out. 

He wakes on the floor. For a few nanokliks he just stares in the direction his head is facing before he realizes that he’s staring at Pharma’s legs. He jumps, and then resolves to get on with his itinerary. What was it? Disable Pharma, check. Next item: call for help. Of course he could probably disable Pharma more permanently, but he’s not feeling up to it at the moment. He’s just about able to drag himself over to the workbench, and pull himself to his feet. 

Priority one is to send a transmission that will allow the Lost Light to come and find him. It’s no use looking for his homing beacon—Pharma has probably crushed it already. He starts to panic, knowing that Pharma could come back online at any moment, but firmly squashes all emotion. He’ll have time for that later.

After a bit of searching, he’s surprised to find that his signal transceiver is still intact. He quickly encrypts a datalog on Fisitron’s secure network and sends it. Could Pharma have crippled it so that he would only _think_ he was transmitting? He casts around quickly for any other signaling device, and finds a long-distance radio. He sets it to ping its location to the Lost Light covertly for a decacycle, and then falls back to the floor. 

It will look better if he tries to escape, more like a panicked victim than a bot with a plan. Quite aside from that fact that he wants to get out of this awful place as soon as possible. He might still be able to transform and drive out of here before Pharma wakes up. He’ll need energon… He makes his way awkwardly to a neat stack of cubes and stuffs them into what will become the back of his ambulance mode. 

When he tries to transform, however, his legs rebel again and he ends up kicking himself in the head.

He sighs in frustration. Right. He drags himself away from Pharma, toward the door at the far end of the room, which must lead outside, and manages to reach the button.

He’s hit by very bright light, and has to shut his eyes for a moment. When he cautiously opens them, there’s snow everywhere and the sky is just as flat and bright. Ratchet decides he must still be on Messatine. There’s an outcrop of rock a few hics away, so he starts to crawl toward that. Figuring that he might as well, he sends another datalog containing only the words “Probably on Messatine,” in case they don’t pick up his ping. 

Crawling over snow is more difficult than he anticipated. Parts of it are slippery, and other parts give way under his weight. He decides that he likes flying over snow much better. _Wet and kind of brilliant_ , indeed. Then he feels bad for thinking it.

After a few cycles he makes it to the outcrop, and pauses to drink some of his stolen energon. He can’t get too far from Pharma’s lair, because he needs someone to find him, but he has enough energon to stay holed up for at least a megacycle. It’s better than waiting with Pharma.

As he’s getting ready to continue, the sound of jet engines overhead makes him look up hopefully. But it’s Pharma who lands in front of him and transforms, not smiling for the first time since Ratchet woke up in his dirty little operating theater. He has dried energon caked onto his mouth and nose, and a gun pointed at Ratchet’s head.

“Nice try. I almost can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think that would work. But, alas, your mind’s probably going the same way as your hands.”

Ratchet throws an energon cube at him. He misses by a pathetically large amount due to the fact that he doesn’t have any _fragging hands_ , and the weak explosion doesn’t even faze Pharma.

“I’m going to carry you back inside with this gun against your head, and if you try anything I’ll blow out your brain module. From this distance—” the barrel of the gun makes contact directly under Ratchet’s left eye—“even you couldn’t miss.”

Ratchet takes some comfort in listening to Pharma’s frustrated grunts as he tries to carry a bot larger than he is. Much more comforting, though, is the fact that that Pharma doesn’t seem to have noticed Ratchet’s transmissions. As a distraction, Ratchet taunts him the whole way back about being too weak to beat up a bot with no hands or legs, and then too weak to lift him. Pharma slams the butt of the gun into Ratchet’s jaw and he shuts up, feeling vindicated.

Pharma locks him back onto the slab, and Ratchet goes quietly. Let Pharma think he’s defeated, or plotting, or anything other than filled with contempt for how easy it was. “It’s clear that I need to make further modifications so you don’t try anything foolish again. Maybe I’ll make you unable to move at all without overheating. Or maybe I’ll just punish you right now and think of something else later.”

“Do your worst,” Ratchet spits, spraying a small amount of energon from his damaged mouth onto Pharma’s face. To his disgust, Pharma licks it off, grinning. 

“I will. Let’s see if I can make you hate yourself as much as you hate me.” He settles himself between Ratchet’s legs and removes Ratchet’s chestplate. “Despite the rather lackluster medical environment, I have retained some very nice tools.” He produces a small tool that could be for anything and turns it on, causing the end to spark. Slowly, dramatically, he brings it toward Ratchet’s face. Ratchet rolls his eyes to show how unimpressed he is.

Then the tip touches his lips, and he gasps because the last thing he was expecting was for it to feel _good_. He turns his head away, trying to muster a sneer. Now he understands what Pharma meant by “make you hate yourself.”

“No? What about…” A sharp spike of pleasure right over his spark casing, and he convulses with a hiss. “The best thing about this beauty is that it has a grasping tip.” Pharma continues to draw little circles around his spark. “I can pull out a nonessential wire like this one and you’ll hardly feel the pain at all.”

“Nnngh.” Ratchet wishes that he could shut down his voicebox remotely, but most of his attention is taken up by how good it feels, whatever Pharma’s doing. He should be able to keep track of it, but…

With sharp little snapping sounds, more wires part company with Ratchet’s chest. One of them must have been for his main cooling system, because his armor starts to heat up. His back is deeply arched toward Pharma now, and if he still had hands he would be clenching them against his sides.

At last it stops, and Ratchet, panting, almost asks why. He falls back onto the slab, berating himself for being so easy to turn into a hot wreck.

Pharma adjusts his position until his elbows rest on Ratchet’s shoulders, so he can put his face right next to Ratchet’s. “Now offline: signal transceiver, cooling system, secondary processor, and all your limbs.” A wicked smile appears. “And you loved every second of it.”

“Frag you,” mutters Ratchet. Pharma’s helm is pressed against his, now—he can’t retreat any further.

“Maybe later.” Pharma withdraws just enough to push his tool under Ratchet’s chin. Ratchet throws his head back and makes a detestable whimpering noise. Pharma laughs, slides down off of him, and walks out of his field of vision. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll bother sedating you. You’re thoroughly defanged enough even for me. I’m off to have a little stasis nap, so don’t go anywhere!”

Pharma’s footsteps fade away. Ratchet bangs the back of his head viciously against the slab a few times. Stupid. He’s a worthless protoform who can’t even take a little torture. Worse, he’s now missing his only way to receive a reply to his datalog. _And_ a third of his computing power.

He can’t get upset, though. His cooling is offline. He can’t remember clearly, but he probably almost went into critical overheat when… Well. The point is, he can’t get upset. He closes his eyes and starts listing treatable medical conditions under his breath.

After two cycles he runs out and has to start on untreatable medical conditions. Then things that nobody’s sure are medical conditions, but are still untreatable. He gets embroiled enough in trying to remember the symptoms of a mysterious syndrome that was killing bots on Cortus III that he forgets where he is for a moment.

Inconveniently enough, it’s this moment that Pharma chooses to walk in, badly startling Ratchet.

“Plotting?”

“Sure,” says Ratchet. He’s annoyed at Pharma for interrupting his train of thought, and annoyed at himself for wasting so much time on trivia. “I’ve got a real good one I can carry out just as soon as I have any working limbs.”

“I might give them back eventually. I’ll have to put your cooling system back online, though, more’s the pity. I’ve worked out what we’re going to do today!”

“I hang upon your every word.”

“How sweet, Ratchet. _I’m_ going to disassemble your arms, and _you’re_ going to watch. You can even provide amusing commentary if you want.”

“No thanks,” Ratchet growls. “I’m a little tired, so I’m not feeling at my wittiest.”

“Are you asking to be sedated? Bad luck, my friend. You’ll have to wait until later. Now, it’s time to begin.”

Of course, Pharma uses his Primus-damned pleasure tool for the entire Primus-damned thing. The sight of his own arm wiring laid bare, with its armor around it in size-sorted pieces, would normally make Ratchet scream in frustration. Now it just makes him scream. It’s sick how he can hear Pharma’s fans whirring even over his own involuntary vocalizations. He struggles to remember that this whole thing is sick.

Pharma’s halfway into his other arm—and Ratchet’s halfway delirious with pleasure—when there’s a crash from the far side of the room. Pharma spins around, his pointless little tool raised like it’s a laser scalpel. Through the gap between his arm and his body, Ratchet can see three bots silhouetted against the brightness outside, but it takes him a moment to get his brain working well enough to recognize them. Skids, Ultra Magnus, and First Aid, all pointing guns at Pharma.

“Took you long enough,” mumbles Ratchet.

Pharma turns to glare at him. “You think this is over?” he hisses. To the rest, “Give me one good reason not to kill him right now.”

“He can’t actually kill me with that,” Ratchet supplies. “You should just shoot him. Preferably nonfatally.”

“That’s _it_.” Pharma reaches one hand into Ratchet’s chest, which he never bothered to close, and takes a hold of a random cluster of wires. “I _can_ kill him if I pull this…” As he turns his head to check what it is, Skids puts a laser in the back of his knee and he topples backward over Ratchet’s legs, sliding down to the floor.

First Aid walks over to Pharma, and when the latter tries to rise First Aid shoves him down with a foot to the chest. “Bastard.” He shoots Pharma directly in the face, leaving nothing but a smoking, energon-spattered ruin where his head was.

Skids finds the release mechanism for the metal cuffs, and Ratchet starts to slide down the slab. “That was unnecessary, First Aid. He was down.” In his spark, it’s hard to be all that angry. Also he still doesn’t have his full mental faculties, which could be a contributing factor.

First Aid turns on Ratchet, deliberately crunching Pharma’s arm under his foot. “Really? He’s been torturing you for almost a megacycle, he was about to kill you, and he's responsible for dozens of other deaths just to save his own plating. I’d say he deserved it.”

“We can argue about this later,” says Ratchet. “Can we just get me back to the Lost Light so I don’t have to look at this place any longer?” Skids starts picking up the pieces of Ratchet’s arms, depositing them in a chest compartment. “And make sure you don’t miss any of those.”

Skids smiles, possibly sarcastically. “Yes, _sir_. Do you have any other orders for us?”

“Yes. I can’t walk. I’d recommend that Ultra Magnus carry me.” First Aid makes some kind of amused noise and starts toward the exit. “Wait, First Aid—” A questioning stare. “I want his hands.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ratchet wasn’t even aboard the Lost Light for very long, but coming back to the medbay is already like coming home. Of course, that could have something to do with the power of contrast. 

He spends a megacycle on a slab while First Aid fusses over him, putting things back in order much more quickly than Pharma disordered them. He never thought he’d be grateful that Pharma didn’t sedate him while he was working, but it means Ratchet can tell First Aid exactly what needs fixing. 

Of course, it does mean he’s vulnerable under someone else’s hands again. He requests that all his limbs be put back online first, so he’ll at least feel like he has the option of running away, but this might be a mistake. He has to keep his entire body under constant tension to keep from twitching away at First Aid’s touch and messing up his careful work. During the times between operations he paces around the medbay, ostensibly to make sure his joints are working, tethered to an intratubular drip.

The hands are the last to go on. It’s an easy, mostly painless operation.

Sooner than he thought, he has leave to walk out of the medbay on his own legs.

Of course it’s nice to be able to move freely, but the first place he walks to is the memorial for Drift and Pipes. He sits in stony silence between First Aid and Ambulon, listening to the crew remembering them at their best, and hates himself for not being able to save them. If he’d been clever enough to get the antidote from Pharma, if he’d found the way to stop him—

“‘Til all are one,” says Rodimus in a ringing voice.

“‘Til all are one,” mutters Ratchet. “Some sooner than others.” When the service is over he leaves quickly, while everyone else is still milling around.

He doesn’t notice that First Aid’s been following him until he reaches the door to his quarters. “What do you want?”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Everything’s the medic’s fault,” Ratchet snaps, not in the mood to pretend he doesn’t know what First Aid’s talking about. “Everyone who died and could have been saved.”

“Guess what, Ratchet? I’m the medic who didn’t save them. You’re the medic who had the bad luck to cross Pharma.”

“I’m smarter than him!” Ratchet has to struggle to keep his voice low. “I should have been able to…”

First Aid puts a hand on his shoulder. “Forget it, Ratchet. ‘Should have been able to’ nothing. We have to concern ourselves with those we can still help—the living. I can’t make you stop beating yourself up about it, but I can tell you it wasn’t your fault until you believe it.”

Ratchet shrugs off his hand, dimly aware that it’s making him slightly panicky. “Leave me alone for a while. Maybe I will.” 

He opens the door to his hab suite, and he’s about to go in when First Aid says, “How are your new hands?”

Ratchet looks down at them, almost black in the dim light filtering from the hallway. A shudder runs through his body. “They’re great.”

First Aid leaves, with one more glance back at Ratchet. The door closes, and he sits for several kliks in the dark. “Fantastic,” he says to the empty room.

—

First Aid keeps trying to touch him, and Ratchet has no idea why. Ratchet wants to shout at First Aid when he taps Ratchet on the arm to get his attention, or knocks on his chest plating, but that’s unfair. He probably doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Rung tells Ratchet what has been obvious since he came home: Pharma ruined something a little more permanent than his energon storage capacity. He was never exactly fond of enclosed spaces, but he could at least tolerate them. Now sometimes even the med bay seems too small and he has to stand on the outside hull of the ship, staring into blackness.

“Now, I looked into your personal history with Pharma, and I notice—”

“All this probing,” says Ratchet testily. “I got enough of that from Pharma.” It’s meant to be a joke, and of course probing is Rung’s job, but he writes something down on his datapad anyway. Ratchet makes a mental note to try and be more like Ultra Magnus in the future.

“You don’t enjoy the feeling of scrutiny,” Rung says, only half a question. 

“Ideally everyone would just leave me alone unless they have a hole in their gut, yeah.”

“And utility is of paramount importance to you.” Ratchet says nothing to this, because of _course_ it is, a medic who’s not useful is… might as well… A medic who’s not useful _isn’t useful_. “Have you had any flashbacks to your time with Pharma since you returned to the Lost Light?”

“I don’t have PTSD.”

“Have you had any flashbacks?”

“Not as such. Not hallucinations. But I think about it, what bot wouldn’t?” 

Every time he looks down he sees his hands. He painted them red, but they’re still not his yet. He could see them as a reminder of his (sort of) victory over Pharma, but instead he remembers what they’ve done. He catalogues Rung’s collection of Arks instead, for the third time.

“I think that’s enough for today. It isn’t the main issue, but I’d like to give you this exercise to do: every night before you go into recharge, write down one thing that’s good about you that’s not your medical skill.”

“And when I run out?”

Rung smiles softly. “You’ll have to get creative.”

The first night, Ratchet thinks for several kliks about how stupid this is, and then writes down, _good under pressure_. It’s probably not what Rung’s looking for, but Rung can go jump in a smelting pool. He reminds himself that Rung is just trying to do his job, like any medic.

The second night, Ratchet has to think for a while before he comes up with: _stubborn_.

The third night, he gets stuck. He wants to write down _loyal_ , but for him that’s essentially the same thing as stubbornness. Or is it? He’s still debating this when his door chimes.

“Yes, come in,” he says, opening it remotely. First Aid is hesitating in the doorway. “What is it this time? Whirl feed his awful bootleg energon to someone again?”

“Er, probably. I didn’t ask. Actually, Rung wanted me to check on you.”

“Tell him I’m doing his homework. I’ll have something to show him next week if it kills me.”

“It’s seriously that hard for you?” First Aid folds his arms over his chest. “Anyway, Rung thought you might want to talk to a friend about everything, instead of him.”

Ratchet really does not want to have this conversation. “Tell me when one of my friends shows up, then, CMO-in-training.”

“Very funny.” First Aid pushes off the doorframe where he’s been leaning and walks all the way into the room. “Rung aside—frankly, I would have ignored him if I didn’t want to be here—I’m worried about you. And you’re being a real glitch about it.”

Ratchet makes a noncommittal sound and keeps his attention focused on the datapad. He’s starting to get the feeling that First Aid isn’t going to back down easily. That trapped feeling.

He’s right. First Aid closes the door and comes to sit on the berth next to Ratchet. Much too close, even disregarding the fact that having him in the room at all is hardly ideal. Ratchet realizes he’s been typing nonsense into the datapad while he was thinking. The document reads:

_1\. good under pressure_  
 _2\. stubborn_  
 _3\. gggggiyyyyryyyyyyyyyyyyffqqqqqqqqqq_

“You haven’t got the most obvious one.” Ratchet enters a long string of Cs, trying to look bored instead of slightly panicky. “Cares about everyone.”

“That’s a liability.”

“It’s an important quality in a medic. Also an Autobot.” Ratchet almost smiles, imagining First Aid struggling to tell Rung what makes _him_ worthwhile besides his medical skill.

“Thanks for helping me cheat, then.” He erases the random letters and inputs _cares about everyone_ , then contemplates adding a sarcastic smiley face. Maybe First Aid won’t get it, actually—has he ever met a human? 

“This isn’t really about the list, though. I want to know what happened with Pharma.”

“You know everything. You fixed it all yourself.”

“Not the physical injuries,” says First Aid. He lays a hand on Ratchet’s forearm, and Ratchet jumps so badly he drops the datapad.

Ratchet curses as he stoops to pick it up. “I don’t see why that’s your business if it doesn’t affect the performance of my duties.”

“Allspark, you’re dumb. I just said you were my friend, about a quarter klik ago. Even if I’m not yours, I still want to try and help you. Primus knows why.”

“If you want to help me, stop touching me,” Ratchet snaps. “I’m starting to think you’ve been doing it on purpose this entire time.”

First Aid looks a little taken aback for the first time. “That was me trying to help. Er, I’ll admit that it wasn’t the best way to go about getting you used to having people touch you again. I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Do you even want to get back to normal?”

“I always do. Sometimes it takes a couple of decacycles, but I’ve been through more traumatic events than you’ve seen dented Autobot badges.” Irritated, he braces a hand on his knee, and has to swallow a scream when he looks at it. This, too, shall pass. It’s already much easier than the first day he was back.

“Do an experiment with me, okay? A medical experiment. Let me touch you and see if it makes a difference when you’re willing.”

“That’s going to be a long time coming,” says Ratchet with a short, humorless laugh. First Aid just looks at him. Ratchet looks away. 

He hides his hands under the datapad and fidgets with it, sure that First Aid is still staring. When Ratchet checks, he’s not, just looking around the bare room with feigned interest.

He almost does want to accept it. He used to make casual contact with mechs all the time, and it made him feel more like he was of the Lost Light rather than just on it. He realizes he’s been silent for several kliks. “Aw, Pit, go ahead.”

First Aid extends a slow hand toward him like he’s trying to feed a turbofox. Ratchet isn’t that delicate. He takes First Aid’s hand as if for a human handshake and sits there, feeling faintly ridiculous and rolling his eyes. He glances at First Aid, who looks like he could be smiling, and realizes abruptly that he’s not panicking at all. First Aid squeezes his hand and lets go.

“Experiment is a success,” he says smugly.

Ratchet doesn’t know what to say to that, so he avoids First Aid’s eyes, lets out a “hmph,” and adds a 4 to his list: _still better at taking novices down a peg._ His dignity’s pretty much lost by now, anyway, so why not?

First Aid reaches over Ratchet’s arm to type _5\. incredibly witty, really absolutely hilarious._

Ratchet enters _6\. too dignified to engage in petty warfare._

_7\. secretly extremely petty, but don’t worry, it’s endearing._

—

At the end of the week he gives the document to Rung, who looks pleased, but confused about some of the items on the list that look a lot like insults. 

“There are over twice as many items on this list as… I was expecting.”

Ratchet shrugs, and smiles. “I got creative.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't resist having First Aid paraphrase his own quote from Marvel's US Transformers series (#26).


End file.
